Intranet Helps Workers Navigate Corporate Maze

Computerworld - It receives 1.3 million page views per day, but it's not Yahoo or America Online or even CNN.com. It's an intranet created by Charles Schwab & Co. that enables Schwab's 23,000 employees to access detailed information about benefits, training, computer support and scads of company information.

The genesis of the intranet was in 1996, with the introduction of Schwab's "White Pages," an employee directory that was Web-enabled at a time when a lot of companies hadn't even launched home pages for their Internet sites.

"As a company, we're very committed to using technology to benefit our customers and to provide good services to our employees," says Anne Barr, vice president of the intranet initiative known throughout the company as the "Schweb."

That effort spawned the Enterprise Directory initiative, which the company began in earnest in mid-1999 with a "sneak peek" pilot version of the White Pages that was accessible from the home page of the intranet, says Barr. During that time, Schwab shifted from a homegrown version of its White Pages to a packaged application from Cupertino, Calif.-based Oblix Inc. to support those pages.

The Schweb delivers a plethora of benefits to both managers and employees at the San Francisco-based discount brokerage. For starters, it provides managers with online access to accurate information about employees. Because the directory is online, it's a lot easier to update and maintain than a set of desktop applications, notes Barr.

The intranet provides employees with more personalized information about themselves, their roles and the organization than they'd otherwise be able to obtain from the company's human resources department. "The other benefit is that it helps employees find the information that they need faster and to serve customers faster, more effectively," says Barr.

Indeed, these types of self-service intranets are a boon for big companies like Charles Schwab, where it can be a bit daunting for a new or even seasoned employee to find answers to questions about benefits, training and more. "Just being able to navigate your way through a company - especially for a new employee - can be overwhelming," says Barbara Gomolski, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Fallbrook, Calif. "From a productivity standpoint, people can save a lot of time about who to go to, who does what, etc. - especially these days, as organizations want people who can hit the ground running."

There are now 30 applications that link into the Schweb, including the Learning Intranet, an application that helps manage training for Schwab's 14,000 customer-facing employees, and eTimesheets, which employees use to manage their own vacation time.